Merry Christmas

We started the morning off fairly early.  Will didn't come in our room until 6:03 and asked if we could just please open the presents now.  We (Jeremy, I was still asleep) made him go back to his room until 6:45 when they went downstairs waiting patiently for Cora and I to grace them with our presence.  Which we did 30 minutes later.

Cora had chocolate for breakfast.  She didn't mind.

Will got a box of Legos, and Cora picked out all of the pink ones and showed them to Jeremy.  She is such a girl, I sure love her.

Look at that face of pure joy. He asked Santa for a rainbow loom, and Santa came through for him.

Santa was tricky and built a box around one of Will's presents.

See that huge box?  Jeremy "helped" Will put together a lego set, which took about 2 1/2 hours.  Cora kept trying to help, but at least she didn't hide pieces in her mouth this year.

Will was really looking forward to eating some cinnamon rolls.  "Can I have one yet? I'm so hungry!"

"You can have one after I take a picture."  Well, he almost made it.  Will downed two rolls and then was asking for a third. Jeremy and I made an "uh..." sound together and he decided on his own that two was plenty.

We had fun just hanging around the house for the majority of the day and enjoyed each others company.  It was very relaxing and nice. 

 In the afternoon Will and I met up with some friends to go sledding.  He said his favorite run was "when both girls just hugged me and we all went down together." 

We had a wonderful Christmas, and hope you did too!

Gingerbread House

Jeremy had a day where he was able to come home before 7, so we got cracking on our annual gingerbread house.  I thought Cora might try to demolish it, but she loved eating all the candy.

Cora helping me roll out some fondant.

These guys are a pretty good team, our house only took about 15 minutes to complete.

Finished product.

The finished project today.  Every time Will goes into the kitchen for something, he comes out chewing a mouthful of house.  Apparently it is a pretty tasty house.

Turducken + Cherpumple

Yup, I still have Thanksgiving on the brain, because it was DELICIOUS!  Even though we weren't quite sure what Jeremy's schedule would be this year since he was changing rotations that week, we still decided to have some friends over for Thanksgiving.  It worked out great and Jeremy made his tastiest turducken yet.  My man can make the best gluten free food!  I was so happy to spend my favorite holiday with some of my favorite people.  The kids played together great and all of the food that everyone brought was so tasty.  I didn't get many pictures because I was busy enjoying myself.  But I did get a picture of Jeremy's tasty birds and our friends masterpiece, the Cherpumple (that is a cherry pie, baked inside a chocolate cake, plus a pumpkin pie baked in a yellow cake and an apple pie baked inside a spice cake, yum!). Yeah, I know you are jealous.

Hmm...what kind of pie should I have?  How about all three?

Starved Rock

We decided to go do something fun this past Saturday because it was the first time in 3 weeks Jeremy had more than 22 hours off of work.  So we drove to an hour and a half to Starved Rock.  When we got there and started bundling up the kids (it was only 40 degrees out), I realized that I hadn't brought Cora's coat.  Luckily Will had lots of layers and was okay with giving his coat to his little sis for the day.

Will is getting to be a pretty good photographer isn't he?

Cora was a trooper, we hiked for 3 hours and she just hung out on her Daddy's back.  This was at the end and it was all she could do to keep her gorgeous eyes open.

Will is starting to overcome his fear of heights.  I'm so proud of him.

We were there at the height of the red and gold leaves.  When the sun came out, the forest just glowed.  

Will did awesome, he packed his water and half of our snacks all 4+ miles.  He actually fell asleep in the car and both kids crashed long enough that daylight savings wasn't a problem for us this year.

Autumn Leaves and Halloween

Cora showing me a prize she won at the church's trunk-or-treat.

Will was pretty focused on what he was doing.

These two helped me rake up leaves this week.  They had a blast running and jumping into the leaves.  With Jeremy working so much, I'm glad for any help and they sure made it fun.

It rained all day on Halloween, but these two still had a blast trick-or-treating in the rain with friends.

Weekend with Clifford the Big Red Dog

This week has been an incredibly long week.  Jeremy started a new rotation that requires him to be there about 14 hours a day, add in an hour long commute each way plus some 24 hour call shifts and that equals almost zero time with the kids.  He has woken up Cora a couple of nights just so he could see her (I usually let Will stay up until Dad gets home, unless he's doing his 24 hour call shift).  So, on Friday when I went to pick Will up from school, we had a fun surprise.  He got picked to take home the beloved class Clifford the Big Red Dog.  When you get Clifford, you journal what you did that weekend with him.  I had figured on staying home and doing nothing since Jeremy is pretty much gone for the weekend, until Will came home with Clifford.  This was awesome, it made us think of some fun things to do just the three of us, plus the dog of course.

The kids got to see Dad for about an hour on Friday night, so they and Clifford dog piled Dad.

Today we went to one of our favorite places, Maple Grove.  

"Mom?  Is Maple Grove the one with the little bridge and all of the fun leaves to crunch?" 

"Yes, yes it is."

"Hey Mom!  It's the bridge, I totally remembered it!"

Clifford is apparently doing some pull ups...and Cora is not impressed.

But you can tell she idolizes her big brother.

Remember this feeling when swinging?  Me too, sometimes I still swing really high when my kids are occupied and the swingset is very secure.

Will bundled up Clifford because he got cold on our walk.  Then they cuddled while watching "A New Hope".

We made a fort tonight and Will made a cozy red bed for Clifford.  I'm not sure if Clifford enjoyed the time Will spent playing on his phone, but Will did "read" some books to him too.

I also made Will and Clifford play with Cora (and keep her from running into the road) in the front yard while I did some leaf clean up.  So while I mowed and blew leaves, Will and Cora and Clifford wrestled and knocked each other down for about a good 30 minutes.  It was awesome. 

Needless to say, even after pumpkin waffles covered in very sugary, yet delicious, syrup, they were exhausted.  

So I learned a great lesson this weekend from our big red friend, even though we miss Daddy, we can still have fun even though Daddy can't be with us all the time.